Repositioning the National Documentation and Information Retrieval Service in the digital Era and Improving Compliance to Statutory Legal Deposits Requirements

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore ways in which the National Documentation and Information Retrieval Service (NDS) can be repositioned, in the digital era, in order to leverage its performance. The NDS was established to ensure proper documentation of government activities within one institution. The Department provides a common storage and point of access of all government archives, published and unpublished reports irrespective of formats. This Service has a very rich collection of colonial and post-colonial Kenya. However in the recent past there has been a drastic reduction in the inflow of government documents. The rate of compliance at the moment is at 3.5%, a very worrying trend. As the Documentation service grapples with the challenge of low compliance to the statutory deposit requirements, it is now faced with a more difficult problem; digital publishing. Most government reports are now born digital by the authoring ministry, department or agency, unlike in the recent past when the Government Printer (GP) was the sole publisher on behalf of MDAs. The Government Printer would supply the Director with two copies of every publication produced. Currently access and preservation of these self-published materials has been very difficult as at times their existence is not even known to the Service. This has resulted in a huge gap in the documentation, as fragmented efforts yield chaotic heritage and hampers the flow, retrieval, access, and use of public information.